TDM 001 ● JUNE 2025

[uruz]

TDM: ONE

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PRELUDE

(content warnings: dream horror, loss of autonomy, mild body horror, cult undertones )


You’ve had this dream before.

A moon cracked wide, spilling tendrils from its craters like bleeding silk. A sky starless and slow. And on the horizon: a wave. Massive. Black. Still. It creeps forward every time like sunrise. It hushes before collapse, but every time before this, you wake up just in time.

But not tonight. You can't outrun it even if you tried— it comes crashing down on you at last, swallowing you like a gaping black hole. Saltless, soundless, the water devours. But instead of drowning, you drift, suspended in velvet dark. And in that dark, her voice breathes.

“You don’t have to fall with it.
Let me in.
I can give you everything you’ve ever hungered for.
A place.
A purpose.
Stay.”

She offers. And you— your mouth, your mind— give an answer before you even know you’re speaking. Yes.

The tide recedes. The dark peels away like silk. You awaken beneath a canopy of gold, in a garden that hums with warmth and longing. Soft grass. Strange trees. Fragrant fruits in every color, dripping with light. And a mask upon your face, no straps, no weight, yet it clings to your skin like it was always part of you. You don't want to remove it. You could, maybe . . . But it would feel like tearing your skin away.

She no longer speaks to you, but her orchard breaths a sigh upon your arrival. A force tugs at the edges of your thoughts, beckoning you to contact the web you're now a part of. Welcome, Vessel.

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YOU CAN THREAD THE NEEDLE

(content warnings: sensory manipulation )

An orchard stretches around you in impossible directions, the horizon blurred like wet paint. Trees curl and arch with an elegance that feels practiced— like they’re posing for someone watching. Their trunks shimmer faintly. Leaves flutter even when there is no wind.

You are not alone. Others stir nearby, familiar or unfamiliar, though that distinction begins to blur. You may not know them, or perhaps you have the feeling you do even if you've never met them in your life. Either way, you might wish to know them.

From the strange branches within the orchard hang fruits shaped like stars, teardrops, or glass bells. Each one pulses faintly, waiting to be plucked. Their effects are subtle but powerful, crafted to cater to your desire and wonder:

🍎A pearlescent orb, cool and slick to the touch, whose taste floods you with a future that might be: a fleeting vision of joy, belonging, or beauty you didn’t know you craved. Whoever is nearby sees a glimpse of it too.
🍎A silver-veined citrus, fizzing like champagne. When shared between two, it evokes the feeling of a first time— first love, first rebellion, first triumph — even if you’ve never lived it. The emotional residue lingers between you.
🍎A blood-orange fruit with velvet skin, which when bitten into, causes your voice to harmonize with another’s— even if you weren’t speaking. You’ll find yourselves finishing each other’s thoughts, or speaking a secret you both forgot you held.
🍎A waxen, translucent fig, which grants you a small miracle: something you longed for appears beside you, conjured from dream. It might be a lost keepsake. A voice. A scent. A face.
🍎A smooth, silver fruit with a mirrored skin. When bitten, it briefly reflects the dreamer’s true self — not as they are, but as they wish to be. For a moment, others may see it too. The illusion clings for a time, making the character appear more like their ideal self in body, presence, or aura.
🍎A dark plum that glows faintly pink, almost heart-shaped, and warm to the touch. Its juice runs red and sticky, clinging to the lips. To taste it is to be filled with longing— for intimacy, for sensation, for touch. The desire may be gentle or overwhelming, but it lingers, tuned to the presence of someone nearby. It is not mindless. It is focused.

At the center of the orchard is a fountain, still and inviting. Its water tastes like clarity— and for a moment after drinking, your thoughts shape your surroundings. What you create might intertwine with what another dreams beside you.

Sleep does not speak in words. She breathes through the trees, hums through the soil, stares through your mask. Her voice, barely a whisper:

“Thread the needle, My Vessel.
Want.
Want, and see what answers you.”

You feel it,— if you resonate with another, something will change. Maybe the orchard will shift again. Maybe it already has.

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THE DAYLIGHT RECEDES

(content warnings: grief, loss, emotional vulnerability)

The orchard is gone. In its place stretches a landscape of ashen grass, supple and fragrant underfoot, warmed by a pale light that doesn’t seem to come from the sun. All around, a soft breeze stirs the fields— endless, loamy, and quiet. The air smells like soil after rain. It is peaceful here. But not happy.

Scattered across the fields are half-buried remnants: old beds, cracked record players, wilted bouquets, melted candles, notes scrawled on napkins— things lost in the moments between love and loneliness. Everything here feels half-remembered, yet painfully familiar. If a character reaches for one of these objects, they may hear a voice whispering a name they have tried to forget, or one they wish they'd remembered sooner.

In the distance, a shrouded figure walks the fields, unhurried, always just out of reach. Their back is turned, but their presence pulls like gravity. Some may choose to follow. Some may wait. And some may realize they’re walking beside someone else— a stranger who seems to carry a memory they, too, once held.

This is a moment of reflection. Interactions blossom from shared worries, slow confessions, or uncanny synchronicities. Characters might recognize something in another, such as a gesture, a phrase, a scent— and feel that thread begin to tug. Best follow its lead . . . You won't be able to leave unless you do.

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EVERYTHING WE LOVE RESETS

(content warnings: body horror, transformation, loss of autonomy, psychological horror, cosmic dread )

You awaken— or perhaps you never truly slept. The orchard is gone. The fields have withered. All is silence now, and the air is soaked in dread.

A still, uncanny plane stretches out before you: rotted soil, stagnant pools, shattered glass trees that hum with an almost-familiar voice. Echoes of what the dream once offered—sweet fruit, blooming things, beauty— remain only as scars on the land. Their pleasures have fermented into menace. The dreamscape is collapsing.

Sleep, ever present, ever watching, does not weep. She has already taken what she wants, and you see her teeth stretched too wide in the shadows. In the reflection that splits back at you. In the soundless breeze with much more bite and possession than the gentle caress of invitation. She whispers, from the shadows between dying stars:

"You said yes. Now let me see what you become."

The mask on your face tightens, no longer decoration. A binding. You are no longer merely dreaming— Your skin may change fluidly, or break down through the bones violently. Your flesh may split, brimming with power, or your blood could burn like lava oozing through your veins. You may even experience it again, and again, and again; a different beast or burst of magic each time. Whether painful or painless, You are now either Token, or Offering. You may not yet know what that means— But your body does.

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EVEN WHEN WE RUN WITH DEATH

(content warnings: body horror, fungal infections, parasitism, loss of agency, cosmic horror, violence, death, cult imagery)

Your surroundings bend and break with growing instability: The sky splits open, revealing a bleeding red moon, weeping tendrils like raw nerves. It feels wrong in a way you have no words for. It sees you. And it beckons for blood.

The dream does not want peace now. It wants performance. It wants pain. And above all, Sleep wants you all to herself. She watches from the broken heavens, humming in delight as you run, as you fight, as you fracture under the weight of your becoming. Perhaps you turn on each other, frightened with what you have become or too frazzled to control yourself, or the newfound power you possess.

There are other things to look out for, though. Creatures stalk this unraveling plane: malformed creatures with mutated faces and fungal blooms bursting from their orifices, or tendrils slithering from what were once mouths and eye sockets. Once Vessels. Hosts. They may speak with familiar voices. They may try to barter, or bite. Those with hands and fingers may try and force your eyelids to part, to tilt your gaze to the sky above you, chanting in tongues that drill into your brain stem. Hushing in song. Whispering Look at her. She is Beautiful.

If you are caught, if you gaze up at Her for too long— you too will suffer the same fate. Fungal bursts and tendrils will spurt from your mouth, invade you from the inside and reach out to her in sacred reverence. It's a horrible way to go. If this is an end you find, you too, despite your pain, may begin to smile. You might have even more reason to attack your fellow Vessels. They too, must see Her beauty like you do.

The song stutters. The dream recoils when you succumb to the worst of Her parasitism, even though you don't lose consciousness. It is not Sleep who speaks next. In your last few seconds of awareness, you hear in your ears, in your mind, in your soul, snarling and thick with fury:


“What have you done?”

The world begins to scream. You begin to fall.

The dream is over.

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NOTES

➤ Welcome to Somnia’s first TDM! All TDMs will be considered game canon.
➤ You are free (and encouraged!) to experiment with the Tether mechanic as well as Vessel options and the Network to your liking; this is a dreamscape, so multiple/different situations for you to really test which option you like most is possible.
➤ All TDMs take place within a dreamscape, meaning characters can interact with the setting without needing to apply. Come have fun with us!
➤ Mod invited players may currently extend one invite per player. Interested players who do not have mod invites or a friend to get an invite from may comment to the appropriate top level to solicit one, or, solicit one from the mod here. Please keep in mind that soliciting an invite does not guarantee one.
➤ Questions? Please direct them to the designated questions comment linked below!

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frédéric "freddie" lavoie | original character - modern realistic setting

[faa]

( warnings. freddie's a former-military, 33-year-old lapsed catholic commercial pilot who has spent the past 4 months skating under the radar with severe undiagnosed bulimia. he's friendly, genuinely kind, and can be fun to be around, but he has some serious commitment/intimacy issues stemming from the parental divorce that made him a devout atheist at age 7 and getting cheated on during his first deployment ten years ago which have left him chronically incapable of attaining the intimacy he craves. instead he just chases it with a life full of hookups, which he consistently self-sabotages by ghosting or calling it off after two or three meetings before he actually gets the kind of affection he's seeking. despite his poor body image and repressed feelings of inadequacy, he gives the impression of someone confident and in-control - when in reality he spends each day feeling like he's holding on by his fingernails. summary & info. )

 I. SMOKE GETS IN YOUR EYES 
thread the needle; citrus — first kill. content warnings: US intervention in the Middle East, contemporary wars, non-graphic flashbacks to killing.

[ He doesn't want someone else to watch him eat, but there's no choice. The symptoms are distinct; he knows without needing to prick himself that his blood sugar is low; he can feel it, the flashes of heat and cold across his skin, the tingling and strange lightness in his hands and feet. There aren't any juice boxes around these parts, but he's found himself in an orchard, which is about as good of a place you could possibly hope to have a hypoglycemic episode in, other than maybe a candy store.

He bites into the first fruit he's able to pick, silver-veined, unfamiliar.

The feeling between him and the other party—he doesn't know how he knows that they're feeling it, only that they do, a spectral link glowing invisible in the space between them—is familiar, nauseatingly so, and immediately identifiable. His body remembers 2016, the memory a virus unfurling in his blood after years of dormancy.

His first kill.

He gives the cue—they're over the IP. The weapons systems officer pulls the bomb release. Even from 50,000 feet, he can see the tremendous column of black smoke billowing upwards from the flattened compound after their payload hits—and then they're leaving, and the target is in the proverbial rearview. He must have just killed twenty guys—and it feels like nothing at all. He doesn't feel horror, or remorse, or sadness that it came to this. There are no conflicting feelings about the widows of the ISIS men in the rubble. Their children. It's a serene nothingness. He feels like God.

When they touch down, when he undoes his harness and takes off his helmet and oxygen mask and gets out of the pilot's seat, his legs can barely support him. He's safe now, and alive, and that opens the dam, allows the delayed euphoria to rush in. All at once, it does, overwhelming the neural circuitry of the soft human body ensconced in the metal fuselage. It's a first cigarette, a first kiss, a hit of what he imagines crack must feel like. His own body on a level of aliveness he's never felt before, every nerve bright and crackling with energy, his heart racing.

That book they had to read in OCS talked about post-kill euphoria, and he dimly realizes that must be what this is. Twenty fucking terrorists. Gone, like flipping a lightswitch. Freddie Lavoie from Rochester, New York just killed. Him. The very same. Some physics major. That was all it took.

His legs buckle under him when he hops down onto the gritty groundcover, but he catches himself by snatching the nearest shoulder and taking them down a few inches before recollecting himself. He laughs, disbelieving, even though nothing is funny. So does his copilot.

And then he's standing there again, in an orchard with a stranger, his reflexive euphoria at destroying human life broadcast for them to borrow. They have no context, but somehow, he knows that they know where the feelings came from. What first elicited that. Shame burns hot in his core, coming up until he's sure it'll choke him. Freddie stammers. ]

I didn't—I'm not— [ He falters. ] I was happy because I was safe. Because they were bad people. Terrorists. I'm not—some kind of monster who just—

 II. YOU'VE JUST HAD SOME KIND OF MUSHROOM AND YOUR MIND IS MOVIN' LOW 
everything we love resets; valkerie — the transformation. content warnings: body horror; possible mentions of low self-esteem/internalized fatphobia, diabetes stigma, and allusions to bulimia/orthorexia further into thread.

[ With no warning, the mask begins to strangle him—wrapping tighter and tighter around his face like a dog's prong collar drawn to its limit, hard metal straining against flesh in a battle only one can win. It gores into the flesh of his face until he's sure it's going to cut into his skin—and then, just as suddenly as it came on, the pressure releases. The mask cracks like an egg. So does the skin over his shoulderblades. His clothes tear like tissue paper as new sensation erupts from long-forgotten limbs.

He's not sure what's happening as it happens, caught in the thrall of his own muted horror, unable to make sound. The wings that burst from the center of his upper back blossom outward further and further, larger and larger, like a single drop of dye ballooning in a glass of water. It should hurt, but it doesn't. The end of his spine transmutates. Tailfeathers spring outwards at the base of his remodeled sacrum, throwing off his balance only to quickly, involuntarily flit upwards and fan out in a bright flash of yellow ends as he catches himself, as reflexive a movement as throwing up a human arm after slipping on ice.

The wings stop growing. He can feel them. Shakily, catching his breath, Freddie dares to attempt moving one, extending it in combination with a turn of the head so that he can take in his new body and get a better idea of the situation he's in. A second shoulderblade glides smoothly under his skin as he gives his body the command to unfurl it and the new limb listens.

It's a wrongness, something that can't possibly be a part of his own body, and beautiful in the same brushstroke. The wings were a mousy gray before he opened them, ordinary, which feels very fitting; he's taken offguard by the brilliant crimson ornamentation at the end of each secondary feather that becomes apparent with the new vantage point, the stark contrast of their dashes of bright white.

For another long moment, he stares. And then he looks across at the party who was standing beside him a moment ago, perhaps now monstrous in form themselves. ]

Is this real?

 III. ON THE STAGE IN MY HEELS 
everything we love resets; valkerie — flight practice. content warnings: body horror; possible mentions of low self-esteem/internalized fatphobia, diabetes stigma, and allusions to bulimia/orthorexia further into thread.

[ Freddie knows how planes work. Not birds.

Some of it carries over—lift, et cetera—and he can guess at what these new parts of his newly unfamiliar body do. He has a general idea of how he needs to use the broad tailfeathers with brilliant yellow ends that almost sweep the ground, how his new wings need to interface with updrafts and downdrafts.

But that conceptual knowledge is a hell of a lot different than practical skill. And there doesn't seem to be any kind of flight school for birdmen here. Well, Valkeries, he's apparently called now, but there doesn't seem to be much semantic different between Valkerie, which does admittedly sound a lot cooler, and a birdman. Either way, he's chosen a small open clearing in the woods to practice being whatever it is that he is now.

He very gingerly unfolds the new wings that have spent most of their time attached to his body undeployed, testing the extent of his own wingspan like a butterfly emerging from its cocoon. Their tip-to-tip breadth is tremendous, spanning more distance than he takes up vertically, big enough to actually have a plausible chance of carrying a 6-foot-tall human body on the heavier side of average. Something urges him to extend them further as they unfold, to stretch. So he does, eyes involuntarily closing, and groans a little as he does—shit, that was a good stretch. That's why birds are always doing that shit.

Enough stretching. He moves the new wings this way and that, practices angling his newly acquired tailfeathers with muscles he's never had before. The best he'll be able to do at first is use his knowledge to guess at the proper angle of attack he should be keeping these new limbs at, but it'll help if he pushes off of a rock or something to get a little more thrust going before the first downstroke.

He finds a little outcropping of granite, about a foot tall—low risk if this fails—and carefully spreads his wings, angling them. He jumps, and manages a single downstroke—with the sheer size of his newly awarded wings, the single beat generates enough lift, enough thrust for him to get a stunning few moments in the air, through the actions of his own body alone. He adjusts his angle of attack on the upward stroke, but not fast enough; the mistake very abuptly pushes him to the ground. He manages to break the fall with a flurry of disorganized flapping that generates enough lift to buffer the impact, but only barely—and none of his attention is going toward paying attention to his surroundings or holding in the startled yelp he unknowingly puts on full display before wiping the fuck out. ]

Fuck—!

 IV. WILDCARD 

i'm vibing with so much of this and have ideas for... pretty much every prompt, but trying to keep this toplevel brief-ish! happy to write starters or tag into specific prompts of yours if you'd like him somewhere! hit me up by pm or pp bluehellgazette to plot!

i.

[avile]

[ Morfydd knows better than to eat a strange fruit. Growing up in the Spire, they were told never to look a gift-horse in the mouth, never to read only the surface of a thing. It had always seemed strange to her, because the Few wore red to mark themselves other, and to see red was a sign for others to stay clear. She is, for everyone else, only surface.

But that doesn't mean she can't walk through the orchard. She's slow, her body moving bit by bit; occasionally she has to stop by a tree and catch her breath. Even in dreams – and that is what this has to be, a dream – her body will not entirely bend itself to her.

Then a feeling washes over her so sharpy that it really does take her breath away, and her hand claws at the trunk of a tree, her mouth falling open. She has never felt this before, not once in her bitter and unpleasant life, and it makes her tremble, her throat stinging, her eyes welling sharply with tears. She's wiping them away when the man comes back to himself, and at once she understands. His strange flush of embarrassment, of shame, eludes her logic. ]

Because you were safe or because they were bad people?

[faa]

[ There are tears she's wiping away, having been forced to experience the act of killing. The dampness she paws at is a stark, nauseating reminder of how one should respond to loss of life, no matter whose; it feels as though he's watching a different iteration of himself, a normal one, react for the first time while wearing the skin of another. ]

Both. Either. I was... I'm not a bad person. I wouldn't just kill without some kind of reason— It was to save lives. In a war.

[avile]

[ Morfydd has killed before, and not dissimilar to this method: the distance, the remove. She has killed from far away, so far that she never even saw the bodies, so far that it never felt real. It still doesn't. How could it?

She pushes bodily away from the tree she'd been leaning against. Her posture is rotten, back hunched, her hair hanging in loose tendrils. She imagines herself a grotesque sea monster emerging from the depths. ]

Is that what you think wars are for?

[faa]

Just wars.

[ He's not comfortable with where this is headed. With how she's dressed, how they're all dressed, there's no telling what time period she comes from—people here seem to hail from all points in history, all worlds. She might not have any concept of oil. She might not have the frame of reference to say that's what he fought for. It feels equally likely that she might. ]

Not all of them. [ Like Vietnam. ] But I think most people who go to war believe they're doing it for the right reasons. They think they're preventing more deaths than there would be without a war. Or they think they're fighting to bring people freedom, or better lives. To protect them. I did.

[ Not initially—initially he'd just gone because he was US military property and the US military was now engaging ISIS insurgents. Having an opinion on the matter wouldn't have changed the reality of needing to rather briskly pack his shit and ship out.

Afterwards, after he'd met the enemy and met the contractors who despised the enemy, there had been meaning. But it had come later. ]

iii

[dethangel]

[Toki happens to be wandering by just in time to get a front-row view of some guy taking off. It's cool and all, and a pretty decent distraction from the fact that his body's all changed... at least until it turns out the guy ends up completely beefing it instead. Then it turns out it's a really good distraction.

Wowee.

[He rushes over to where the guy's landed and offers a clawed hand out to help. It's not like he can judge that landing very much, after all. He hasn't even bothered trying to fly with the big, pointy leathery things jutting out of his back just yet. Too much other stuff to worry about. Like horns, or the fact that he doesn't even feel like he's done yet.

Anyway, more important stuff to deal with.]

I saw you fall, [he says, just in case it wasn't obvious there was an audience.] You okay?

[faa]

[ Oh, lovely! He had an audience!

Freddie Lavoie has always been fortunate enough to have the sort of complexion that doesn't easily flush, but he can still feel the heat of his own embarrassment rising to his face as he takes the offered hand despite its clawed digits and picks himself off of the ground. The new wings are more sensitive than he always assumed birds' wings were; he can feel that they're dirty, and it's not really pleasant. He also probably looks a little ridiculous. So awkwardly, jerkily, Freddie ruffles his new feathers in a partially successful effort to shake off some of the dust from them before introducing himself with an awkward smile. ]

Just my pride. Would you believe I'm a pilot?

[ It doesn't elude his notice that this guy also has wings—how could it—and there's the immediate impulse to ask if he's figured them out. One thing at a time, he decides, especially because he's not sure if his wings actually work based on how they're shaped and the lack of feathers—they look almost demonic, or dragonlike, like you'd see attached to a very literal representation of Satan in a pamphlet being handed out by Southern Baptists, and even knowing that this world is some kind of a dream, he can't turn the mind of a pilot, and the background in physics, on and off at will. It would really suck if he was stuck with those and couldn't even use them. ]

[dethangel]

[Would Toki believe it? Yeah, probably. He's seen some of the best pilots Dethklok's ever had fall to a number of mishaps that maybe they shouldn't have. Shit happens, whether you're a pilot or not.]

Well, yeah. You don't even have a cockpit or anything.

[That's an important part of being a pilot, he knows that much. It's not like he's a pilot himself, but he's pretty good a knowing the various parts of an airplane, and he knows Dethklok's pilots will let him go look at any of theirs whenever he wants. So he's got pretty decent knowledge of the whole ordeal, and none of it involves having wings actually attached to your body or anything.]

You can't, uh... pull on the things.

[faa]

'Pull on the things?'

[ Freddie quirks a brow in sychrony with the upward twitch of one mouth corner—but it's genuine amusement, and perhaps also a level of relief at the evening of the playing field, as opposed to laughter at the other guy's expense. He seems decent. ]

You mean the throttle?

[ He mimes the motion, grateful that he's kept the hands to do so, even in this form—he's seen a few people around who weren't so lucky. There are... any number of things to pull on in a plane, depending on the plane—flaps, control stick, et cetera—but he figures this is what would come to mind for most people. ]

[dethangel]

Yeah, and all the little things they put in there.

[He moves his hands like he's miming pressing a bunch of buttons or something. Look, it's not like he knows the name of every little thing in there. He's not flying the things, after all. He knows a little more about construction than the rest, which probably isn't useful when you're talking about stuff the real thing actually does.

But he's right!! You can't pull on the things!!]

It's gotta be different when you're, uhh... when stuff's on you, and you're not in it?

[faa]

Yeah. To say the least.

[ Freddie regards his newfound wings again, now folded back behind him as opposed to extended in a frantic effort to buffer his fall. His beautiful, useless wings. And tailfeathers. Considering all of the plain brown birds in the world, he certainly could have done worse.

He glances back over at the interloper, nodding toward the wings at his own back, decidedly different in morphology, almost more like a bat's or something. They appear to be more of a membrane than solid flesh and bone. ]

I'm Freddie. You figure those out yet?

[dethangel]

Oh, hi. I'm Toki.

[Gotta do the whole nice introduction thing, to make up for what he ended up witnessing. He turns his head, trying to get a better look at his own wings.]

Uh... I don't know if I can move them enough for that yet. They're... really new.

[He spreads them out a little, although that's about the best he can do at the moment. They're dark and a little bony around the edges, but if he's some kind of demon guy, then surely he can fly once he figures them out, right?]

But I wanna try sometime!

[faa]

Well, I wish I could say I could help, but as you can see...

[ Freddie gestures, now with his featherless arm instead of the already-tired extra limb resting folded behind him on the same side. ]

I could look at them though, if you can stretch them out. We might be able to figure out if they're even built for flight. Assuming the rules of this place match the rules of the real world.

[ Things like lift, thrust, drag, all of the forces he's spent more than a decade continuously interfacing with. Based on the fact that there's still gravity here, and wind—and what he felt during his own brief, botched attempt at flight moments earlier—he tends to think that it's all still at play. But he's also grown wings, which decidedly does not happen in the real world, so the truth might lie somewhere in-between.

At least it'll make him feel useful. ]

[dethangel]

Okay... hold on...

[It's hard to really purposefully move his wings in any meaningful way. His brain's not exactly prepared for two fresh limbs moving around with the rest of him, and his first attempts mostly twitch the things, which isn't much help. They're long, hard to describe as much other than "demonic," and it takes him a good few tries to even stretch them out.

Eventually, though, he manages to get the "spread" signal to go through, and they cooperate, stretching out to allow a closer look. They might very well be able to provide flight eventually.]

Wowee... It's really hard to move these things.

[He hopes that isn't a sign he won't be able to use them, because otherwise... well, they just get in the way, don't they?]

cw internalized fatphobia

[faa]

Wow.

[ He hears what he says about the difficulty, but it takes Freddie a moment to return to the conversation—the smooth planes of flesh spanning between each long pole of bone are fascinating to look at, like a canvas glider, and already his mind is moving in a thousand different directions, trying to decide how these would best work, how they would interface with all of the forces he's familiar with.

But he does, eventually, return to the conversation after his moment of awe. ]

It is. I don't think we have... I don't think they come with the necessary muscle tone already included. [ He doesn't embarrass himself by agreeing that he's already tired out too, which he would offer up without a second thought were he still in the Air Force, thinner, visibly in shape. Now it could just be attributed to letting himself go.

Freddie takes a few paces around to stand at his side, studying the expanse of his new companion's wings with a trained eye. ]

They look like they'd be good for gliding. You could probably ride the wind without flapping, if I had to guess. Not sure these can do the same thing. Most birds can't.

[ His luck. Flying is going to be exhausting in a way sitting in a cockpit isn't. ]

[dethangel]

[Toki just kind of lets his mind wander while his wings are getting looked at. It's hard not to think about how cool these would look on an album cover or something, or even just onstage. Move over everybody else, it's Toki's turn to have the spotlight.

Buuut there is still a conversation to pay attention to. He nods, focusing on keeping his wings spread. At the moment, if he doesn't think too hard about them, they start to fold. He'll need to get used to all that, especially if he's going to do stuff like fly and glide and all that other fun wing stuff.]

Ohh... that sounds really fun.

[He is 100% thinking loop-de-loops. Feasible? Who cares, he's thinking about it.]

Birds are really good at flapping. Maybe you can figure out what birds know about stuff that makes them good.

[faa]

I mostly do, [ he offers, and it's not intended as a brag. ] We learned all of that stuff in flight school, and I majored in physics in college. The forces that keep things in the air are the same. That's how humans initially got up in the air, copying how they knew things that evolved wings flew.

[ Frowning, he glances over at his own wings, which, as Toki's want to do, have folded at his back, their ornamentation now mostly hidden beneath mousy gray feathering. ]

It's just a matter of figuring it out physically. As you saw.

[dethangel]

Oh, huh. That's cool.

[That's probably helpful for planes, sure, and then you get the added benefit of kind of knowing what to do if you happen to grow wings all of a sudden. While Toki knows a lot of conflicting stuff about demons and the like... well, nobody ever gave him a lesson on anatomy.]

So... you should get really good at it if you already know all that stuff.

[The best he can do with his own knowledge is stuff he learned from Dethklok's various pilots and what he learned about planes through osmosis from building models. Still... it'll probably be fun to figure out.]

[faa]

[ The confidence in him from this random stranger—well, Toki, because he's introduced himself and they're kind of in this very bizarre shitshow together, so it kind of feels more like strangers in the way the guys in other units he shipped out with were strangers—is appreciated, and perhaps needed. He's practiced at staying calm in godawful situations, but this... is still testing him, and the fact that he's not even really strong enough to use these new wings, that he's obviously too out-of-shape for it judging by how fast his heart rate leapt up once he started trying and the new ache in his shoulders and in muscles he never had before, isn't helping.

So, thanks, Toki. ]

Yeah, I hope. Assuming we don't, like... wake up from this. This is a dream.

[ He has to keep saying that, like repeating it enough times will stamp out the traces of doubt gradually spreading in his mind like crawling ivy. But every sensation here is so vivid, and while the alternating English and Québécois French is a common feature of his dreams, the clarity of feeling and the sharpness of every detail isn't. And this is also dragging on far longer than one single dream usually does—one cycle of REM can only be like, what, an hour long? Before a new dream starts, or before the dream halts and picks up again?

And that hasn't happened. ]

[dethangel]

Oh... right.

[It's easy to forget the whole dream thing with how realistic everything feels around here, even if he's had plenty of realistic dreams himself. But he's also like... not sure. Because when dreams happen, and you know it's a dream, isn't that when you wake up? And he hasn't done that part. This isn't any of his usual dreamscapes either. While he's heard there's a way you can know you're dreaming and just play around like that, hell if he knows how.

That could bring up another idea, though. He squints down at the ground in thought before looking up again.]

But... maybe you can be really good at it anyway? Because it's a dream? So... you just have to think you're good at it.

[It's easier said than done, though. He's still having trouble moving his own wings in ways that he wants to. That might just be the whole having trouble telling the difference between real and dream problem, though.]

i!

[hexrot]

[ jayce knows this feeling all too well. it spurred his attack on silco's shimmer factories with vi, it made him swing a weapon that shattered bone and bodies to their death, putting blasts into ogres fit into body armor, pumping them with enhancements. they were simply that, at the time: enemies. monsters. bad people. the problem filling his shoes and making him lose sleep with concern, for his own safety, for the safety of others— and the shattering expectation put upon him that he needed to act. he was expected to act in a role he never wanted, but did his best to fill. to provide. eventually, that pathological want to do a bit of everything for everyone who mattered would break him apart in the worst way.

and it started when one of his blasts, in his frenzy, in his rampaging euphoria filled with a power none of them had but he did, constructing it from his own brilliance and handiwork (indeed, it was god-like, dangerous. hextech would destroy them in a war if he were absolutely mad enough), that jayce struck a child. that child died. all that wild barricading came to a screeching halt, and he didn't know what to do with it. with himself, with the body, with the other hundreds of displaced children who then looked at his notable face, once on posters. not a golden boy, not a man of progress. not even someone who was doing the right thing. just a killer.

no matter how many times he shook, or cried, or woke up in cold sweats from the night terrors haunting his hours of rest, he was still a killer, too. nothing was going to change that.

jayce finds himself overwhelmed with the feeling, but not registering that he was suddenly too close to this man, and hooking an arm under his to steady his descent at the very least. moving on his own. going through the appropriate movements. overwhelmed in a sense that he just— nearly shuts down. there are no tears, no shame, not even a grimace. just an empty, floating sensation of detachment, that he was not here despite being quite grounded, on his feet.

it started with the child and grew into this fucked up formula that had to do with survival, that he vaguely has a sense of, but seems to far away to be in touch with. ]

I can't judge you.

cw references to body image issues, discussion of civilian casualties in mosul

[faa]

[ The sudden human contact burns like white phosphorus, an intimacy too blindingly bright in the current moment to behold directly. But he doesn't shake it off, either, lets the man get an arm under him in his copilot's place, just enough to keep him from falling to the ground in the moments before his legs regain their stability. Then, once his tendons feel like they've resolidified and returned to their normal tensile strength, he separates himself; he'd rather people didn't touch him most days, didn't feel the weight and bulk and softness of his body. It's a slow starvation, a gradual hypoxia. He used to like being touched.

Freddie lets out a shuddering, unsteady exhalation. The guy's looking at him like he knows, like vets look at vets, and that could be why he says that, but it could also be because that's what civilians are conditioned to say—and if you know you're standing next to someone who got a high off of killing, wouldn't that be the safest thing to say in the situation? ]

It wasn't... that wasn't like me. I'm not like that. I wouldn't just... I wouldn't go out and kill without a reason. A very, very good reason. These people were... they were monsters.

[ Nine to eleven thousand bodies in Mosul, up from the Iraqi government's official estimate of about 2,500, weren't. They were just women, children, old people. Men in wheelchairs. He tries to redirect his thoughts to the man standing in front of him. He wishes he could leave and shower and scrub himself until the water runs cold. ]

[hexrot]

[ people? plural?

jayce's hold here is clinical; it serves a purpose. to get the man up. keep him on his feet. as soon as he no longer needs it, his hold is no more, also quick to retreat. he'd always been affectionate, always been quite easy to throw them around to those he enjoyed, but— the reason for his creases that has aged him beyond his years has made him more cautious with and when he extends such devotions.

there's something about these words that twist an irritable bubble in jayce. the kind thing to do was comfort this man, or maybe the kindest thing was to tell him the damn truth. what he sees every day he looks in the mirror, how his clean shaven, boyish wonder has been sapped right out of him. he shakes his head at first, silently, his lower lip jutting into his top, the longer he keeps thinking he's still good and justified is time wasted in place. no progress. ]

The second you choose to kill, that's what you are, too. Reason doesn't matter.

cw discussions of killing and IS group perpetrated SA, snuff, torture, murder

[faa]

[ The words hit him like an electric shock, like ice water dumped down his shirt. There's discomfort and immediate, knee-jerk resistance, some mechanism of self-preservation even in the face of the similar thoughts that have sprung up with ever-increasing frequency in the back of his mind with the passing of every additional month separating him from Iraq, from Mosul and Syria and CHUs and the fuselage of an enormous metal bird engineered with the sole purpose of killing.

I'm a killer, they said in basic training, over and over again. I'm a killer. If you say it enough times, maybe it'll be true when ISIS starts shooting at you and you have to shoot back. They watched the masturbatory carnage of Full Metal Jacket and Saving Private Ryan and Jarhead and Black Hawk Down over and over, whooping and roaring and howling when the blood started to flow on their laptop screens and American GIs like them started spraying bullets and mortars, caught in the erotic thrill of the power behind the whipping blades and huge door guns of American helicopters descending from the sky to Ride of the Valkyries like dark sinister birds of prey and imagining themselves harnessed into the pilot's seat, opinions on the Vietnam War be damned.

If he's a killer, it's because he was engineered to be one. But so were they. And the insurgents in Iraq and Syria were more than just killers, they were something else. ]

No. There are killers and there are monsters, but they're not the same. These people were—subhuman. Rapists. Torturers. They beheaded people in the name of their religion. Have you ever fucking—seen a terrorist snuff film? Seen someone just—hack up a body for sick kicks? They murdered women and children from their own country, their own religion, in cold blood. So I chose to kill them. We all chose to kill them, because the alternative was letting them own half the Middle East and go around raping and murdering whoever they want. There has to be justice.

that's a wrap for new things!

[hexrot]

[ there are certain words being said here that jayce knows the meaning to, of course, but the actual context of all of this is . . . lost. it is being thrown up and babbled in a quick attempt to cover. this man is rigged with trauma and guilt for something he . . . admitedly, chose to be a part of— and jayce has enough of those two things with his own problems. ]

You chose. There's nothing else to be said.

[ if this stranger is worried about judgement, he shouldn't have to worry about it cominng from jayce. perhaps he's the only one being judgemental of himself, it seems. he wasn't even there— what could he say about anything?

jayce was a scientist. a man thrown into the role of leader and defender when the people looked to him for it. when he had to be. but military, enforcer— he wasn't any of that. ]

If you need to justify it to progress, [ the dream glitches, whispers his last words as the world around them distorts, and jayce could feel his presence waining until he's only left words behind in this dream: ] that's on you.